The Sensory Deprivation Tank

There is a particular type of torture, much beloved by the US military and other freedom- and democracy-loving agencies for societal improvement, that involves locking people up in a floatation tank of water that is exactly just at human body temperature, say, 37.2 degrees, and that is completely and hermetically sealed off against the penetration of all light and sound. Air is provided unnoticeably. The overall result is that the hapless victim that happens to find themselves at odds with the humanitarian agency for Betterment of the Human Condition at hand, potentially by failing to vote for the required person or party, or, worse luck, by voicing opinions considered detrimental to the lucrative and continued conduct of business, ends up in a state of complete deprivation of sensory stimulation.

   While it may not seem all that unpleasant to be floating around in peace and quiet in total darkness in a tank of warm water without, for instance, having to go to work, pay the bills or do the dishes, the complete and utter lack of input from the outside world drives people desperately mad within a short period of time. Without light allowing to distinguish perspective or the shape of the world, without sound confirming that there is actually a world outside, and without the sense of touch to prove that there is in fact such a thing as physical reality, people lose the plot and within a very short time are howling for their mum and begging to be released. This is usually the point where they are given the statement to sign that they regret everything they’ve ever said or done, including, foremost, being born, and are shipped off to the asylum, or, alternatively, to a carefully selected foreign government that requires a new head of state and is in dire need of being brought into line.

...On this day the night very closely resembled such a sensory deprivation tank.

   As we pushed out into the surf we shivered in our wetsuits, or, in the case of the Snake Catcher, who proudly disdains the use of a wetsuit and is known far and wide for his intriguing green and blue complexion, in his speedoes and Life Saver’s skull-cap. Winter had arrived with a vengeance in our small town of Eagle Bay, and the Great West Australian Current, never the most user-friendly and thermically pleasing entity to be negotiating with, had set itself the challenge of freezing-over the mighty Indian Ocean. We looked west towards Africa, just a bit further out there in front of us, and fantasised about tropical water, bananas and the tender ministrations of female chimpanzees. If only.

   Paddling out in a morning hour that is so early that it more reasonably qualifies as night time is our thing. It’s what we do to be able to avoid the crowds of holiday makers who flock to our town like clockwork every school holidays, mostly from the big city in the north, and flood our break. It’s the only way we can get a wave in peace and quiet without having to fight and hustle and argue, and engage in all those things that can make the face of surfing look very ugly indeed. Habitually we surf with moonlight when the moon is full, and often we find ourselves just in the dark without moon, using only the stars for guidance.

   Today was different, however. It was pissing down with rain, a good thing, we felt, that might well contribute to keeping the holiday-makers at bay, and clouds covered the sky from end to end. Because as we struck out into the night, dragging our arms through the water and negotiating the breakers, a very peculiar sensation came over us. As soon as we had cleared the white breaking water and found ourselves out the back, where we liked to take off, we found ourselves in complete and utter darkness. We are no strangers to the dark. We have learned to see in it a long time ago, and when people confess to being scared of weird and wild creatures in the night, lurking unseen in hidden corners, it’s usually us they are thinking of. But this was another kettle of fish entirely. The cloud cover blocked out any and all starlight, and the darkness was completely and utterly impenetrable. It was like sitting in a dark room with a blanket of black velvet pulled over your head.

   Looking ahead into the wide Indian Ocean, it was impossible to distinguish between the water and the sky. There was no hint of a shimmer of a clue where the horizon was, and as we gently bobbed up and down on the swell all we could see was uniform featureless blackness, punctuated by the driving rain. The total lack of any point of reference, combined with the invisible rocking motion of the sea, brought back a strange memory.

   Once upon a time I was a professional fisherman, working on boats. I have a cast-iron gut and never, under any circumstances, ever got seasick, not even when the boat I was on was smashed to pieces and sank in a violent storm that we were lucky to survive. But the very first time I ever set foot on a boat, I spewed all day from morning till night time. I worked through it, heaving and barfing left and right while covered in fishguts and blood, and the next day I was right, never to get sick again. But the memory remains, and this bobbing up and down was eerily similar to that.

...The Snake Catcher didn’t like it one bit. I could hear him swearing in the dark. Just as well, it was the only way I could work out where he was.

   The only way to surf in these conditions is to go by feeling only, to try to gauge from the rising of the water below you if there’s a wave that could be paddled for. The Snake Catcher thought he had one sussed, and paddled blindly, only to be skull-dragged over the falls and to end up in the white downstream, a dark blotch in the white foam.

   Next one was my turn, and I pumped my arms for what they were worth, waited until I could feel the lift of the tail of my board, and jumped up in complete darkness. I looked sideways, trying to see the shape of the wave, and, within seconds, the nose buried itself and I went flying. Nice one.

   The Snake Catcher was having a bad run. A veteran of many decades of surfing all over the world, his wave count is usually exponentially higher than mine, myself having come to the Art and Craft of Surfing only five years ago. There’s no waves in the Northern Territory, and, if there is one by dint of cyclone swell, it’s usually got crocodiles in it. Surfing is not a thing in the Territory.

   We regrouped in a particular patch of darkness that appealed to us slightly more than the next one over.

   ‘I just saw a fin,’ the Snake Catcher said grimly, ‘and I don’t think it was a dolphin.’

Ah. Good news, then.

   ‘... and something just swam underneath me,’ he added. ‘I saw it, and it looked big.’

I nodded appreciatively, if slightly puzzled as to how he could have seen that if I couldn’t see the tip of my nose.

   ‘Right,’ I said, and scratched my left earlobe, ‘but that wasn’t What You Think It Is.’ The Thing That Shall Not Be Named. To name it is to call it into existence, give it form and shape, and, importantly, teeth.

   ‘It wasn’t?’ the Snake Catcher replied, mystified.

   ‘No,’ I assured him. ‘I know this patch here, I used to do kayak tours here, there’s a reef below us.’

   'Yeeees ....?’ the Snake Catcher said, doubtfully.

   ‘... yeah, and that was a turtle, one that lives here. I know it.’ I added authoritatively.

   ‘You do?’ I couldn’t see his face, but I could vividly imagine his eyebrows wiggling up and down in existential dread, angst and disbelief.

   ‘I do mate. I’d know that one anywhere. It’s Tony.’

   ‘Tony?’ Even through the sound of the hammering rain I could hear the dumbfoundedness leak through his voice.

   ‘Yeah, you know ... Tony The Turtle,’ I added, in my most persuasive voice. ‘He doesn’t bite.’

   ‘Tony The Tu ... are you fu–’ he started.

   ‘Look, there’s a wave! Quick!’ I yelled, taking great care to put large amounts of unwarranted enthusiasm into it. ‘Go now, go, go!’

   The Snake Catcher, not being able to see anything any more than I did, shut his mouth with an audible snap, spun around and paddled hard.

   Three seconds later I heard the unmistakeable sounds of someone being dragged upside down across the sandbank, swearing, blowing bubbles and spitting out a mouthful of pilchards, bluebottles and spare teeth. Didn’t sound like that had gone down very well. I sniggered maliciously and with feeling. Any other day that’s me, usually.

   Something prickled at the back of my head. Some unknown sense or feeling, alerting me. Was it Tony, paddling over to have a word with me about badmouthing him behind his back? I’d never hear the end of it. It would take him all day just to get to the end of his first sentence. Turtles are slow.

   I stared into the dark, straining my non-existent night-vision. Was that something moving towards me? Could I, stretching the limits of the acceptable and the plausible to their utmost breaking point, possibly hear the water building up into a wave?

   There was only one way to find out. I swung my arms wildly and erratically, beating the water into a frenzy around me and knocking several small and unsuspecting fish unconscious, put my head down and my arse up, a proud pink beacon of ignorance in the dark night of disinformation, and paddled like a maniac. Felt the tail lift again underneath me, sensed the gap open up below me, and, barely knowing which way was up or down, I jumped up, landed in my favourite crouch and steered right hard, mad keen to avoid another nose dive.

   And, against all reasonable expectation, I felt the wave open up in front of me, run away towards the far side of the bay, and I leaned forwards and sideways, pushed out with my back foot, and, steering by nothing but pure blind feeling and half-crazed panic, rode that wave as it unfolded beneath me, rolling out into the darkness like a carpet of oil, mat black, dark, impenetrable, invisible and yet powering onwards into the night. And as it went on I responded to its shifting and heaving below me by moving my weight forwards and backwards, leaning this way and that, without ever being able to see the wave; and I rode it out halfway across the bay, till it petered out, laid down and went to sleep, and I fell off gracelessly into the inkpool of the sea.

   It’s the closest to surfing by braille you’ll ever get.